After the third assassination attempt against the president — who, for his part, calls his political opponents ‘traitors’ and demands their hanging — cooler heads are finally prevailing and taking the rhetorical temperature of our political discourse down.
Just kidding.
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In the aftermath of a controversial Supreme Court ruling on race, gerrymandering, and the Civil Rights Act, rampant fearmongering, vile invective, and outright misinformation about the complex case are all going viral.
“The Supreme Court just made it constitutional for elections to discriminate against black people,” one TikTok video with 1.2 million views falsely claims, bizarrely comparing the high court’s ruling to viral instances where influencers have said the word “n*****.” Meanwhile, influencer Leigh McGowan, who has 3 million followers across TikTok and Instagram, falsely claimed, “Jim Crow is back,” referring to the infamous segregation-era barriers that prohibited black people from voting.
“They’re going after the 13th Amendment,” which banned slavery, another TikTok video with nearly 600,000 views suggests. “They want to make us chattel property. They want to reinstate the right of white people to own black people again.”
Meanwhile, some of the discourse was openly racist, particularly toward Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who is black, but voted with the conservative majority in this case. For example, a black TikTok creator with more than 700,000 followers called Thomas a “coon ass n****” and said that his white wife’s family makes him “use the entrance for the help.”
Lovely stuff.
To be clear, the underlying case here is incredibly complex, and there are good-faith arguments and concerns that many have with the court’s ruling. But much of what is going viral online — and being spread on major media platforms like The View — is hyperbolic beyond belief and, in many cases, objectively, factually false.
The Supreme Court did not “make it constitutional for elections to discriminate against black people.” On the contrary, it specifically affirmed that the Constitution prohibits intentional racial discrimination. It simply suggests that gerrymandering efforts that have the effect of diluting racial voting blocs are not inherently unconstitutional if they are motivated by political and partisan ends, not racial motivations. (If you want to get rid of political gerrymandering altogether, that’s another conversation and not what this case was about).
The court also ruled that intentionally designing congressional districts to increase black representation is unconstitutional racial discrimination. This sets back the efforts many states have taken, and is the primary reason that many are warning that this Supreme Court ruling will lead to fewer black members of the House of Representatives.
But if it does, it won’t be because of a return to Jim Crow (let alone slavery). It won’t even be because of racially-motivated gerrymandering — it will be because of more unfortunate partisan gerrymandering that costs Democrats seats, combined with the fact that most black representatives are Democrats rather than Republicans.
It’s unsurprising that people feel strongly about such a contentious and historically significant case. Yet the out-of-control doomsday rhetoric and online fearmongering are only serving to mislead people and needlessly inflame the rhetorical temperature. And in light of the ongoing surge in political tensions and violence, the timing couldn’t be worse.
Brad Polumbo is an independent journalist and host of the Brad vs Everyone podcast.